After Dramatic Expulsion From Ukraine, What’s Next For Saakashvili?
By Christopher Miller
KYIV -- Mikheil Saakashvili has left Ukraine in much the same dramatic fashion that he returned in September after being stripped of Ukrainian citizenship: hauled across the Ukrainian-Polish border.
After several failed attempts to silence or lock up the stateless former Georgian president-turned-Ukrainian-opposition leader, authorities in Kyiv on February 12 finally nabbed him in -- of all places -- a Georgian restaurant and rushed him onto a chartered flight to Warsaw.
CCTV footage published overnight on Saakashvili’s YouTube channel showed more than a dozen armed and masked agents in camouflage sprinting into Kyiv’s Suluguni restaurant and scuffling with two men, one of whom appeared to be Saakashvili. Moments later, the agents are seen dragging Saakashvili out by his clothing and hair. A few hours after that, he was on Polish soil.
The operation was set in motion after a Kyiv appellate court rejected Saakashvili’s political asylum appeal last week, opening a legal way for his expulsion or extradition from Ukraine.
The country’s Border Guards Service said it chose expulsion “in compliance with all legal procedure.”
So what’s next for Saakashvili?
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